JER's Pralle To Focus on Global Platform

McLEAN, VA-Michael Pralle, the new president and COO at J. E. Robert Cos., has only been on the job for a few days so he is not ready to lay out his strategic vision for the firm for the next 10 years, he tells GlobeSt.com. One thing of which he is sure of, however, is that JER’s investment focus will be increasingly on global markets. Pralle, with an extensive background in international real estate investment, is gearing up to duplicate and hopefully exceed his accomplishments at GE Real Estate, where he was also president and CEO managing a global business portfolio of over $78 billion in assets in 28 countries.

“[JER] is at an inflection point where it has an opportunity to accelerate its global investment,” Pralle tells GlobeSt.com. “Right now it has a great platform with multiple [international] funds. It is a very exciting time for the company.” Indeed, just a few examples of JER’s global reach include the Marbleton Property Fund, a $321-million equity pool that will focus on investments across all property sectors in Russia and Ukraine, JER Europe Fund III, which has a total buying power of up to $5.4 billion, and growing investments in Latin America.

“We see many opportunities outside the US and want to be positioned well to take advantage of them,” he says. Among these opportunities is the simple equation of less capital chasing deals and the inherent benefits of global diversification. For instance, he says, at GE he never ran up against Blackstone in Japan, “but in the US when we looked at EOP [for possible acquisition] there was Blackstone. Also, diversification is a cornerstone of any good investment policy: if one market goes down it doesn’t necessarily have to bring down an entire portfolio.”